The Awakening--Part 4

The following are two open-ended response questions from past AP Literature Exams. Choose ONE of the responses and write an extended response addressing the prompt. This should be about two paragraphs in length. Be sure to have a thesis statement.

A. Choose a distinguished novel (The Awakening) in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action.

B. Select a moment or scene in a novel (The Awakening) that you find especially memorable. Write an essay in which you identify the passage, explain its relationship to the work in which it is found, and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness to the work as a whole.

The Awakening--Part 3

Please read through the reviews of The Awakening from 1899--when the book was published--on this site:

http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam854/summer/awcritf.html

1. Choose an excerpt that resonates with you and copy and paste it in your response. Be sure to cite it.

2. Respond to the criticism--do you agree, do you disagree--why? What has made you respond to this particular excerpt?

3. Comment on another classmate's response.

Example:
From:  St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 20 May 1899--C. L. Deyo
  "The Awakening" is not for the young person; not because the young person would be harmed by reading it, but because the young person wouldn't understand it, and everybody knows that the young person's understanding should be scrupulously respected. It is for seasoned souls, for those who have lived, who have ripened under the gracious or ungracious sun of experience and learned that realities do not show themselves on the outside of things where they can be seen and heard, weighed, measured and valued like the sugar of commerce, but treasured within the heart, hidden away, never to be known perhaps save when exposed by temptation or called out by occasions of great pith and moment. No, the book is not for the young person, nor, indeed, for the old person who has no relish for unpleasant truths.

Response: I completely disagree that a young person "wouldn't understand" this novel. Although it may have been written from a "middle-aged" woman's perspective, she touches on themes that resonate for all readers, regardless of age...why hide "unpleasant truths" from youth? (etc..so on and do forth..)